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DURING A WRITERS' STRIKE
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Will America fall apart
with writers on strike?
of TheColumnists.com
The writers’ strike began last week in Hollywood and New York, and no one knows what’s going to happen.
Writers Guild of America members want a bigger share of the take on future sales of material to “new media” such as I-Pods and the Web. They believe they made a terrible deal 20 years ago on sharing revenues from VHS and the as-yet-unheard of DVDs, and are determined that this time around, they are going to be cut in for more money on new and burgeoning communications technologies.
One already popular picket-line chant: "Webcast, DVD: You can't have it, not for free."
The producers scream that they can barely keep gasoline in their Bentleys, what with the exorbitant price of production these days, and the writers ought to just shut up and write.
You’ve already noticed there are no more new monologues on "The Tonight Show" and "Late Night with David Letterman." That material has to be written on a day-by-day basis to keep it current. You can’t stockpile it. Same thing for “The Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert’s show. You’re seeing reruns.
Next will come the daytime dramas. Most of those producers have enough scripts on hand to last into the new year, but if the strike continues beyond then, production will cease.
After that come the scripted prime-time television shows such as “Desperate Housewives.” It varies from show to show, but some of them may be able to stagger through a new season, perhaps judiciously augmented by reruns.
Lacking scripts, networks will give us more reality/competition shows, more quiz shows, maybe even an expanded revival of variety shows and--dare we hope?--more news-oriented shows.
There is a lot of fear that the expected dropoff in television viewing will become permanent. Last time the writers struck, in 1988, network television viewing declined, and never fully recovered. It could happen again, and from a relatively smaller base of viewers.
The optimists among us believe there is a chance that people will read more and maybe even hold conversations during the evening hours. Could there be an upsurge in newspapers? Not likely. We’re too hung up on being passively entertained, and have been for decades.
But never mind all this. There’s politics to consider. Yes, politics. The urgent question in the marble halls and out on the campaign trail is: “What is the writers’ strike going to do to campaigns and, in fact, politics in general?
You doubt there is a connection? Ha. There is.
To wit: Jon Stewart, Colbert, Leno and
Letterman make it a regular practice to skewer politicians. Remove
the nightly needle, and what happens? Will politicians start
to become more arrogant? Without savage and humorous daily reminders
of their fallibility and their screwups, is there a danger that
they’ll begin to take themselves more seriously, if that’s
possible? What about President Bush? If he’s not held at
bay at least partially by being mocked on a daily basis, what
might that unleash? Most people don’t even want to think
about any liberating effect it might have on Vice President Cheney.
Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama wasted no time reacting
to the strike, issuing a statement only hours after the walkout
began on Monday, Nov. 6:
"I stand with the writers. The Guild's demand is a test
of whether corporate media corporations are going to give writers
a fair share of the wealth their work creates or continue concentrating
profits in the hands of their executives. I urge the producers
to work with the writers so that everyone can get back to work."
The next day, John Edwards released his statement:
“The striking Writers Guild members are fighting an important
battle to protect their creative rights. These writers deserve
to be compensated fairly for their work, and I commend their
courage in standing up to big media conglomerates. As someone
who has walked picket lines with workers all across America and
as a strong believer in collective bargaining, I hope that both
sides are able to quickly reach a just settlement.”
As of this writing, nothing from Hillary. And nothing from the
Republicans.
We’ve been told that a startlingly high percentage of the young people who pay any attention at all to politics get their political information from The Daily Show and Colbert. Now that there is no up-to-the-minute Jon Stewart on in the evening, what will they do? Read the New York Times? (Don’t count on it.) More likely, their interest in politics, never very high, will decline even further and may remain lower. Will they vote in fewer numbers as a result? What does an even older voting demographic, if that’s what happens, mean to campaigns and policymakers? Be assured that knowledgeable and highly-paid people are pondering all this and have been for several weeks now.
I think that the national audience, already cable-fragmented into tinier and tinier segments, will slice itself into even thinner slivers as a certain percentage of Americans go in all directions in search of news and entertainment. That will hold true even though the network evening news programs, newspapers and magazines will still be plugging away as before.
The long-range concern is not so much the fact that people are going to be deprived of some areas of entertainment for a few weeks or, God forbid, months. It’s what new habits will take root in a certain percentage of the population while the writers are on the picket lines. And those new habits, through a convoluted and little understood series of consequences, could have subtle but widespread effects on who we elect and how they govern.
Here are a few for-instances: If a certain portion of the electorate gets a daily fix of Jon Stewart’s or Jay Leno’s lacerating political wit (well, their writers’ lacerating political wit) and it suddenly stops, what will be the result? Will they begin to venerate politicians? Will politics fade from their consciousness? Absent Letterman, et al, will voters be more influenced by campaign television spots? And will they therefore vote less intelligently than they might otherwise?
There’s an ancient studio joke about a hopeful but dimwitted starlet’s tactic to get to the top: “She’s so dumb she slept with the writer.”
Times have changed.
©2007 by Charles M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Nov. 12, 2007.
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